It's been four years since we first set eyes on our little Empress. Oh, sure, we had the referral photo...



But there was nearly a year between that picture and this moment:



Four years later, as you can see, she's doing just fine.



We send our best wishes and most heartfelt thanks to her caretakers, who did so much for our little Cub during her first sixteen months.

Further research into the historical archives in the Skagit and Whatcom region has unearthed further photographic evidence of the pint-sized desperado known as the Zhangzhao Kid.



Although the initial incident was inflated into something that would be more at home in a collection of tall tales about Pecos Bill, this appears to be the only known image taken of a confrontation with the beast known as the Vicious Devil Cat of Lion's Creek. While legend describes this beast as fifty feet long with fangs like machetes and claws like longswords, the zoologists we consulted insist that it is, in fact, a Northwestern Pygmy Puma.



Finally, there is this photograph, found in a pile of dusty old sewing magazines from the early 1930's in a tiny cottage near Lincoln, Nebraska. It may have been intended for use as a publicity photo on a dime novel cover.



(And on a related note, while it was meant to be a birthday and/or Xmas present for my lil' Cub, and has in fact missed not only her birthday but mine, word has come that Far West is due to go to the printer later this month! I hope to have a screenshot of her credit posted soon.)

(Not to mention that I will almost certainly be tinkering with this little gem of a game to play out a few scenarios... http://twohourwargames.com/sixgunsound.html Which means I'll be looking for a kungfu cowgirl miniature or three.)

Four years ago, give or take a few hours because of that pesky International Date Line, Diane and I slept through our alarm and scrambled to get ready for our friend Jeff's arrival in our tiny parking lot...all so that we could fly two hours south to San Francisco and then fly north again...eventually landing in Beijing to begin our three-week trip through the Middle Kingdom.



And while usually I stick our favorite photos of our lovely guide, Helen of Beijing, and our capable and ever-steady wheelman, Mister Zhao, this year I'm leaving a shot of the most heartwarming meeting we had in those first days:



Our deepest thanks and warmest wishes to everyone who made our stay in Beijing so enlightening and enjoyable!

Sad news: Merlyn passed away early Tuesday morning. Diane was with him, and he went peacefully. I, unfortunately, had to get Babygirl to school and catch my bus to get to work on time.

He was pushing sixteen years old, and his health had been a bit rocky for most of the past eight: this was the fourth, maybe fifth serious incident since we moved to our present location, and while not as dramatic as his heart condition or the possibly-a-cancer close call he had a while back, it was bad enough.

Diane is holding up fairly well (after a few days to recover). I'm still waiting for it to really hit. Avalon is finally relaxing a little, since she's finally grasped that he isn't just hiding somewhere out of sight waiting to pounce. ParkerAnn keeps telling us how much she misses him and wonders when he'll be coming back from the kitty doctor. She's getting the idea, slowly but surely, that he's just not coming back (which is heart-wrenching right after she's suggested that we ought to buy Merlyn a new cat toy or two for when he gets better).

He was ever and mostly Diane's cat, probably for food-related reasons. His core personality struck me as akin to Brad Pitt's stoner in True Romance (Floyd) or perhaps Jeffrey Lebowski: laid back, unconcerned with the stuffy pretense of dignity in favor of a more relaxed approach to life, and a healthy love of catnip. Somewhere in the process, he acquired a middle name (entirely my fault). Diane suffered these touches of quasi-paternal influence with fairly good grace, but insisted that when I borrowed his persona to voice some of our answering machine messages that I had to give him a more dignified approach than the surfing stoner who came to my lips the first time.

I'll just end this with a few pictures of the little guy.




The Cat Abides



"Do you like my hat?"



"This is my box. Go get your own."


Merlyn Cornelius Agnew
1995(?)-2011

Twelve years ago today, Mrs. MP and I exchanged vows in a cozy little church in her hometown, accompanied by maybe fifty or sixty friends and relations. Haven't had any second thoughts so far, I promise you!

And that, ladies and germs, was the real reason we took our little pilgrimage up to a certain antique store out here in the Great Green, on the recommendation of some close friends who told us that Nasty Jack's was the place to get these pictures done. Can't argue with that--we saw a place doing similar pictures at the Whatcom Fair a few weeks back, for much the same prices but about half the quantity of available costumes and a monochrome backdrop instead of an actual set.

So...happy anniversary to us, and it's just as well we went yesterday because today is gloomy and overcast instead of bright and sunny :)

I'm also working on the best way to explain the concept of anniversaries to our Cub, who has been asking why Mama and Baba are making such a big deal about this (because, frankly, we didn't do this last year...). I think I may have found it--she remembers the day we met her for the first time, and she seems to grasp the idea that we promised to take care of her, so when we talk about Parent Day we remind ourselves of that promise. If I put our anniversary in that context (Mommy and Daddy promised to take care of each other), she seems to get the idea.

Sort of.

I think.

Anyway, we had a blast, and the pleasant young woman who was filling in and helping out with the photos was very patient with us while we fumbled about...she clearly enjoyed the shoot as well, and the end result is that we'll probably be going back a few times when the whim strikes us. Plus she asked if she could put one of our pics up at the store.

So here we are, cowpokes all. I was hoping for a padre's outfit (for the irony) but no such luck. Next time it might well be pirates (and Cub is very excited about being a pirate, arrrrr!).

Amidst frantic translation on the Haghut-Kierkel manuscripts during a seminar on ven archaeology, one of our staff (who shall remain unidentified for their own safety) unearthed the following image on the last page of a dog-eared and tattered text chronicling the various misdeeds of a pint-sized desperado known as The Zhangzhou Kid.

The photograph is reported to have been taken inside Nasty Jack's Saloon in either 1876 or 1877. The identity of the other two people in the photograph is less obvious, but the woman is certainly the infamous Doctor Snake. This means that the man is probably Brother Tusk in spite of his accouterments--the lawman's badge on his jacket renders such an identification purely conjectural, but it is difficult to imagine who else the man might be. (Doctor Snake and Brother Tusk were the Zhangzhao Kid's constant companions during her career.)

Unfortunately, the text is a third-hand source at best, compiled mostly from contemporary newspaper accounts which current research has shown to be faulty when not outright contradicted by extant evidence.



A more reliable source is a monograph on the Kid herself (whose gender and ethnicity rather make her stand out among the ne'er-do-wells of Skagit and Whatcom Territories). It clearly describes her sartorial choices as being a melange of Chinese and Western fashions, as shown in this photo from the Fairhaven Chronicle morgue. The original was unpublished by the paper and lay forlorn and undiscovered until a graduate student stumbled across it while cross-checking the beetroot production statistics for the late 1890's.



As our present responsibility is the relatively complicated excavation of the ven sites of the upper Skagit River valley and the Snohomish Massif, we have reluctantly forwarded all the pertaining documentation to the appropriate department for review and further research when resources and time permit.

This is what happens when I share Daddy's Lil' Desperado pics with my coworkers and muse aloud about how cool it'd be if we could get the durn thing in sepia tones and looking properly vintage.



Thanks a million, Marko! :) You should've heard her delighted squeal when she saw this one pop up on the screen at home.

Long story short, someone's Halloween costume is already assembled and ready to go...and for various reasons, this ties into an upcoming post (probably happening in December) about a certain game project that...

Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, permit me to present early photographic evidence for that disarmingly cute desperado known to posterity only as The Zhangzhao Kid.










More details later as the big day approaches. In the meantime, you can ponder the contents of the following link which may bring a measure of enlightenment:

http://intothefarwest.com/

Our little Fire Dog is showing some unusual tastes in music. This is perhaps not surprising, given how eclectic and odd mine are, but still...

We have long since discovered that if we put on classical or mellow music while on the road trip to Grandma and Grandpa's home, she doesn't fall asleep so much as get wound up. But if we put in, say, Linkin Park...or Metallica? She's out like a light bulb.

She's developing a tolerance for Killing Joke. She seems to like The Tea Party. And I'm pretty sure she likes Poe.

We have not recently tested her tolerance for bagpipes, but sooner or later it'll be Wicked Tinkers.

Strangest of all, her favorite song is Cherry Lips, by Garbage. It could be that she's got a budding girl-crush on Liz Manson (yeah, right). It could be the vaguely retro sound of the piece (no, don't think so). But it's probably because she can recognize all the words in the chorus and sing along with them.

Probably.

Oh, and Baba is not allowed to sing along. Or take Cherry Lips off infinite repeat if she's in the car. If I do change it to, say, 'Til The Day I Die or Untouchable or Cup of Coffee, I risk being pestered for "baby song! Want baby song!"

I really need to get a few more of these written...but today's entry involves a willing step past my usual comfort zone. (I've also left a similar message on the appropriate game forums at housesoftheblooded.net so pardon me for any semblance of plagiarism.)

One of the downsides of the hobby is the impulse to try new and unusual systems: it can get expensive, and there's already the problem of 'too many cool ideas, too few players, too little time'. Still, sometimes it's worth the trouble. My current fave designer is John Wick*, for various reasons, and today's game is about something called The Shotgun Diaries.

Before I go any further, I need to make one thing crystal clear: I do not like zombie games. I do not like zombie movies. I did not laugh at Shaun of the Dead, and only enjoyed Zombieland because of Bill Murray's brief cameo (I'll take ironic death for $800, please, Alex). I would rather saw off a limb and go to a job interview paneled by Genghis Khan, Cao Cao, and Great Cthulhu than sit through anything that involves the living impaired. The only cliche monster I detest and loathe more than zombies is vampires, sparkly or otherwise.

That said...

There are now two zombie games that don't suck. Two days ago, before I made this impulsive acquisition, there was one**. That should give you a fair idea of how well this one reads. I won't do it justice by trying to summarize it without spoilers, but it captures the essence of the genre beautifully. I trusted Mister Wick to turn a genre I normally avoid like the plague into something I'd be willing to run, and he did. (My tabletop group, knowing my opinions on the living impaired as they do, will probably flinch if they read this, if not quake in fear and loathing.)

Not bad for an eighteen page game written as a birthday present for a friend. (Rumor has it that Mr. Wick will be integrating this into something called the Big Book of Little Games, so I may end up buying it twice, but what the heck.)



* Not because he wrote 7th Sea and Legend of the Five Rings, neither of which I've read or played, but because of something called Houses of the Blooded, which is either a) Diplomacy, the RPG or b) Amber, without shadow and Pattern, with dice, and with a cast that aren't all related...only cooler. I'll have a review of this up sometime soonish, once my copy of Coronets But Never Crowns arrives.

Check it out here:
http://housesoftheblooded.net/

and buy it here, if you dare
http://johnwickpresents.com/market/pdfgame.html

** That would be Two Hour Wargames' All Things Zombie, designed by the mighty, mighty Ed Texiera. Found here...http://twohourwargames.com/horror1.html

(Updated 3/18/2012 to fix an outdated URL.)